California – Page 2 – TooBusyForWork

Titus Canyon, Artist Palette, 20 mule team, and heading home

Folks, you just thought I had a lot of pictures in previous posts! Get ready for even more.

The most amazing thing we saw at this year’s Encampment was a 20 mule team pulling newly built borax wagons. The wagons are 2 years old, and carefully created by a wagon builder in Montana to the original specifications. They are huge! The Death Valley Conservancy paid for them, and they helped fund the mule team too. The mules are from Bobby Tanner, an outfitter and packer in the Sierras, and he is one of only a handful of people able to manage such a team.

See the FedEx truck? Yeah, so did everyone else! The road was closed, but he thought he could get past the NPS, CHP, and the Sheriffs. Didn’t work out too well for him.

This is Kevin’s picture, taken from a high hill so you can see the bigger picture. The wagon train consisted of two huge wagons for borax, a water tank, 18 mules, and 2 horses. Yes, the term “20 mule team” is a bit inaccurate, but that’s the way it was done historically. And the team isn’t driven from the wagon but through a “jerk line” wielded by Bobby Tanner in the blue shirt and hat on the horse in front.

And I got the most amazing video I have ever made! Click on the link to see it, and turn up the volume to hear the mule bells. Watch towards the back of the team to see a mule “jumping the chain” to change the wagon direction. The wagons had solid axles, and they had to be turned by brute force.

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We didn’t hit many of the standard places for Death Valley pictures because we have done them so often. We did make an exception for Titus Canyon and Artist’s Palette. Titus Canyon requires a high clearance vehicle and some confidence, but it is a lovely drive. It is one way on a very rough gravel/rock road with tight turns and steep climbs, but the views are well worth it.

You eventually drive down a wash with narrow walls

The town of Leadfield boomed for about 6 months and died. It was a hoax.

Someone didn’t believe the road needed high clearance. This resulted in a dead car and two days of the canyon shut down until they could tow the car out.

On the road into the canyon from Beatty.

Look at the layers curling more than vertical! That is an example of the stress the land has undergone

The Artist’s Palette is another famous section of one way road. The formations has different minerals that provide a wide range of colors. And no, the green isn’t copper.

It is pretty, isn’t it? I hope you now believe Death Valley is more than sand dunes and dull brown rocks.

We left this morning for the 1200 mile trip back to Iowa. We made it to Kingman, AZ at Fort Beale RV Park. Quite a change from the spacious spot we had at DVNP, but such is life. We did get rewarded by a fantastic sunset tonight though. Too bad it is the result of smoke from the fires in California.

Emigrant Canyon, Skidoo Mill, and the 49er Encampment

On Monday we took a 4WD trip with ten other 49er vehicles to Emigrant Canyon and Skidoo. We had a good time, saw cool stuff, and gave the Jeep a good workout! We started up Emigrant Canyon to the mines and mill remnants near Emigrant Spring. It was a fine gravel road.

Not much left, but this cabin is in reasonable shape

Not all mine shafts are closed. This is one near Emigrant Spring

We continued to the townsite of Skidoo, an important gold mining area in the mountains just southwest of Stovepipe Wells. There isn’t much left of the town, just some old roads and metal fragments.

Not much left of the mine either, and we had too many vehicles to get there

The mill is in great shape. Notice the fifteen stamps still in the frame

Many of the mines were covered with bay friendly covers

It was over a 20% grade. Jeep made it just fine.

Looking toward Mesquite Dunes by Stovepipe Wells

We spent the next few days just hanging around and doing Encampment stuff. I participated in the amateur night known as Coyote Howl doing the Robert Service poem “The Shooting of Dan McGrew”. It went quite well. The professional music has been good too. We spent time watching the blacksmith and chow wagon crews too.

The Dutch Oven demos provided cobbler samples. Yum!

Portable blacksmith shop was making things. They let visitors help too.

One of the highlights is the historical character re-enactment by Steve Hale. This year he portrayed Snowshoe Johnson who used some of the first skis in the US. AS A Norwegian, he had grown up with them, and used them to run the first mail route over the Sierras in winter.

Oh, and we had dinner with friends from the RV Forum.

I will save the posts about the 20 mule team, the borax wagons, and the wagon train until after we leave tomorrow. I should have cell service in Kingman where we hope to stay.

We are RVing again!

We spent Sunday night in a La Quinta on the north side of Tucson, and it wasn’t very nice. It was more expensive than the others, and we got upgraded when they didn’t have our room cleaned at 5:30 (really?), but it just wasn’t very good. We had a wonderful lunch of green chili chicken enchiladas at Adele’s in Las Cruces on the way in. Definitely will be remembering that spot!

We got into Needles just after noon Pacific time on Monday, New Year’s Eve. I was slightly nervous about the power in the RV, but everything was fine. We had left a penny on top of a frozen container of water to make sure the freezer didn’t get warm, and it was fine. The coach’s batteries were fully charged on the solar, and we happily pulled it out of storage into Desert View RV Park that was only a few blocks away. It is so nice to be in our own space again. The park is nice with mostly long term residents. Our site isn’t very big, but the long term sites are bigger. The park was having a karaoke night for NYE, and Kevin and I joined them. Well, I did some singing, and Kevin was a great audience. Nice folks here, and we have a good rate because we are staying a week at a significant discount.

Tuesday we just relaxed. I had enough driving! We did some organizing, cleaning, and shopping, but mostly we just relaxed. We weren’t too interested in doing much since there was a dreadfully cold wind on both Tuesday and Wednesday. We had planned on going to Oatman, AZ on Wednesday, but we chose to just visit Davis Dam.

There wasn’t a lot of power being generated which matched the low levels of the river. We also drove through the Davis Camp Campground, a public campground just below the dam on the Arizona side of the river. The dry camping sites were gorgeous – right next to the river. The full hookup sites were very crowded though, and I doubt we would want to stay there in the future.

Today we took the belated trip into Oatman. I love the views on the way there.

The drive past Oatman is spectacular too.

And of course, if you go to Oatman you have to take pictures of the “wild” burrows.

Kevin has been doing some organizing in the motorhome. He put together a shoe rack I bought, and luckily it fits perfectly on the closet floor. I was tired of a confused pile of shoes on the floor, and now we can see them all. Even better is the cabinets he has modified for a spice rack. The doors were hinged, but had no pulls. Kevin rearranged the pile of wires and flexible hoses behind the door and added the pull.

He had ordered this spice shelf and bottles while we were home. They fit very well. There are actually two cabinets, so he is going to order another spice cabinet when we get home this spring. It will be awfully handy.

That is enough pictures. I am recovering from a sinus cold, and I am now going to bed!

Back in Iowa

We left the motorhome in storage in Needles, CA on Tuesday, 13 November with both the solar and the refrigerator running. I am nervous that something will go wrong and I will have a disaster in the refrigerator when we get back, but logic says it will be fine. I hope so!

We spent the first night in Santa Rosa, NM at the Super 8. Not bad, and we would go back if it was convenient. They did charge an extra $10 for Lily, but is was clean. The second night we stayed at the Days Inn in El Dorado, KS. We intended to stay in Wichita, but it was challenging to find a place close to the road so we drove a bit farther. We did eat at a totally fantastic restaurant in Wichita called Mediterranean Grill. Absolutely wonderful, and I will drive out of my way to eat there again.

As for a route, we chose to just drive I-40 to I-35. It was a bit longer than taking some state highways, but it was just so much easier we did it anyway. Since we bought an Oklahoma PikePass on our way to Death Valley even the Oklahoma and Kansas turnpikes were easy. We got home on Thursday, 15 November in the late afternoon. The house feels huge! What doesn’t feel huge were the televisions, especially in the bedroom which is much smaller than the ones in the motorhome. Of course that gave Kevin the perfect excuse to shop for a new living room TV so we could move the old one to the bedroom. Haven’t figured out where to move the bedroom one yet, but we will figure something out!

My daughter in law had ordered me a wonderful turkey from a local specialty house, so I picked up a 20 pound bird on Friday. It went straight to the refrigerator. We will be having my daughter’s family and my unmarried son for dinner, so five adults and a toddler. The turkey is definitely overkill, but that’s what they had. Kevin also smoked a glorious 14 pound turkey, but it pretty much all went to leftovers for the kids (my married son and his family showed up in the evening). Two pecan pies, one pumpkin pie, turkey, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, and mashed potatoes made up the menu, and it was wonderful. I brined the turkey for the first time, and it was a brilliant idea.

The other particularly nice thing about being back in the house is that I get to be back in choir. We are practicing for a cantata by Mark Hayes that is filled with Christmas carols. Lovely, and I so enjoy singing with a group again. Our performance is on 9 December.

I admit the cold here is pretty intense for someone just coming back from the Southwest, but we will survive. I just had to pull out all the big winter coats!

Almost done with RVing this year

We left Death Valley today just before 10:00, and we are spending the next two nights at the KOA in Needles, CA. Another big windstorm came in last night, and we were worried it was going to be too windy to leave, but the wind died down a bit around 9:00 so we decided to go for it! It is just less than 250 miles, so it wasn’t a long day thankfully. Most of the roads were quite narrow 2 lanes without much traffic. The KOA is very nice though with sandy sites and not much noise.

Yesterday, on the way back from Pahrump, we actually made reservations for January at Stovepipe Wells full hookup campground! We had planned on going to the regional FMCA rally in Indio, CA, but we decided we wanted more Death Valley instead. Well, I wanted more Death Valley, but with cell phone data! Kevin survives much better without internet than I do.

Also on the way back from Pahrump we took the 20 Mule Team scenic drive. It winds through a deeply eroded lake bed made mostly of yellow silt.

The silt contrasts nicely with the colors and layers of the distant mountains.

The contrast would have been more intense without the smoke pall from the fires to the west. The haze is the reason we didn’t visit the big overlooks in the park or went star gazing.

Tonight and tomorrow are for laundry and throughly cleaning the coach. Tuesday morning it goes into storage here in Needles until we come back after Christmas. Sigh.

Huntington Beach via Bolsa Chica State Beach

When I was still working, I did a lot of work for Boeing in Huntington Beach. Kevin hasn’t spent much time around Pacific beaches, so we decided to spend a few days at Bolsa Chica State Beach, 3 miles or so north of Huntington Beach. We arrived in early afternoon on Saturday after a long hassle driving in a crowded city. Ugh.

The sites at Bolsa Chica are very narrow and the road between the two rows is also very narrow so it was a challenge getting in. After we got set up I discovered I had not measured the spot for the slide correctly and we were 2 inches short! We just kept the slide almost all the way out since it was way too much work to move it over those two inches. The campground sits between Pacific Coast Highway and the beach. We had a site on the highway side and it was very noisy, but then again, it was at a beach so we just dealt with it. We wore foam ear plugs the first few nights, but it was better by Sunday night. Since we arrived on Martin Luther King holiday, the park was packed. We still managed to do a lot of sitting and looking at the surf, a lovely thing.

DF985F6E-B484-455F-A5F3-37AE446FF82E — Surfers were always present

0AD5CA6A-C54F-4B24-B386-C8D8B970C68C — The first few days had low surf

5CF6C033-2C76-4C81-8D26-56EF89D8CE1B — The last two days had high surf warnings

We had two problems. One, my back is killing me when I walk for more than 40-50 feet. That put a damper on wandering around much. We did get to have lunch at Duke’s on the beach, and I found a wild Hawaiian shirt at a store downtown. We even found a new hat for me at the HB REI store! The second problem is more of an issue with my back; Kevin forgot the chargers for our electric bikes! I can bike quite a way even with a sore back, but the bikes have a range of about 20 miles and we intend on being out of town for 5 weeks. We are looking for a way to get someone at home mail them to us, but we may have to drive back to pick them up. We can’t get any new ones mailed to us in time.

I am also trying a new hobby – English paper piecing. I am hoping it is something I can do in short amounts of time when I don’t want to pull out my sewing machine. 140323DE-9EBB-4E7A-B173-F7055E4336FE

We left California today to head to Quartzsite, AZ for a RVForum.com rally. Quite a difference from the ocean. More on that in the next post.

Calico ghost town

We did make it to Calico Ghost Town today, a San Bernardino county park. There is a full hookup area where OHVs are allowed but it was full, so we have a site with electric only. I am actually pretty glad because it is really loud in that area while ours is nice and quiet. It is a little tight, but we managed to get in.

The ghost town admission was included in the fee of $35. Not a bad price since admission by itself would have been $8 for each of us. The place was relatively empty which made for an easy visit, but some of the stores were closed on this Friday during the off season.

We ended up taking an eight minute train ride on a reworked ore train. I do like taking historic trains, and this one was great fun even if it was very short.

710CC792-8EC9-4BED-AE42-5C6C776299C8 — It was a very narrow gauge!

F45BA009-A959-4233-9230-2A7235DF32DE — The best miner’s houses were in the rocks to provide shelter from the blistering summer heat.

A7BFBF27-2EA6-44B5-9418-2866C2025F20 — This ore cart was sitting by the side of the track.

The view from the station back to the town was nice also.

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ED7C1C50-A510-49CF-A0BD-4645233225DC — I doubt the palm tree was planted by the miners.

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It was a nice relaxing day. We even had a beer at the saloon, a nice change from being in Utah.

Tomorrow we will be at Bolsa Chica State Park on the beach! We will have water and electric hookups only, so we will be sure to dump and fill up before we leave here tomorrow morning.

Last hurrah of the 2017 season

Today was our last real day camping in 2017. We head home tomorrow. Even though we will spend one night on the road, I don’t really consider that “camping,” so today was it.

We went back to the Mohave to visit the Goff Schoolhouse Museum on the southern edge of the Reserve. This place is totally misnamed! It should be called the Goff Railroad, Mining, Ranching, and SchoolhouseMuseum since there are more exhibits in the first three categories than the last. Here is the namesake Schoolhouse.

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It is prettier than this picture shows. The big porch provided a cool place to sit on an unreasonably hot day. It also has a number of palo verde trees surrounding it, but they are just outside the frame. The museum is free though we dropped $10 in the pot. It would have been well worth twic that amount. Here is just a sample of the neat sites.

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These three pictures are of a two stamp mill mill that was disassembled, brought to the site, and lovingly restored by volunteers.

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This is a ten stamp mill, also brought back to life by volunteers. I guess my pictures sow I was particularly impressed by the mining exhibits.

We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Lake Havasu City. We also went to see the Christmas lights on the canal next to London Bridge, quite nice. We filled the truck with fuel, and we are back cleaning up for tomorrow’s drive to Cedar City. We will stop at the KOA there are get everything ship shape to put the trailer to bed for a month and a half until our trip to California and Arizona in mid January. I always take this chance to wash everything I can in the trailer, both inside and out. We pull the rugs, quilts, sheets, bedspreads, towels, etc. These things get washed as needed on trips, but this is the time of year they all get put back completely clean. Kevin has decided to winterize the trailer back home since the weather is still so warm.

Next at home is a lot of sewing and quilting. I am making myself finish quilting a bedspread for our queen sized guest bed. I also need to finish a couple of Quilts for Kids kits. We will see how much I get done our the quilt for our king sized bed. It should keep me busy!

Catching up: Moving into Arizona

We are now at Route 66 Golden Shores RV Park at Topock, AZ. It is a quiet, older park and has the nicest people! We had Thanksgiving dinner with the other residents, a potluck with lots of food. My contributions were smashed red potatoes, made in the Instant Pot, and my new favorite dessert – Upside Down Apple Bread Pudding. I found it at https://recipeforperfection.com/upside-down-apple-bread-pudding/. Take a look:

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Isn’t it gorgeous? For the potatoes I cut up 5 pounds of red potatoes into 1-2 inch pieces, added 1 c. water, then pressure cooked for 8 minutes. I drained the potatoes, smashed them some, added sour cream, butter, some milk, garlic flakes, and salt. It was so easy!

Other than Thanksgiving, we visited Oatman on Route 66 to see the donkeys.

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The donkeys are definitely part of the experience. They stay in the middle of the road and beg. A number of the businesses sell donkey food so they are spoiled rotten. I particularly like the picture of the baby nursing.

My birthday was on Monday, but I gave Kevin my nasty cold so we just stayed home. On Tuesday we decided we felt well enough to get dinner so we went to Lake Havasu to do some sightseeing, eat, and get groceries. The lake has a bunch of miniature light houses, so I took a picture next to the miniature Split Rock lighthouse. The original is along Lake Michigan.

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I apologize for my wind blown hair!

We also went to the marina to look at the boats. While there we found a huge flock of quail, probably 75 or more. They were obviously after some bugs that were hanging around the parking lot. A few pigeons were in the mix too.

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The first picture is pretty bad because we didn’t want to disturb the birds. The second is much better at showing the quail plus a friendly rabbit.

We went to dinner at Cha’Bones, and it was wonderful. I had prime rib, a baked potato, and mixed roasted vegetables. Kevin had a T-bone with the same sides. It was some of the best food we have had in quite a while. The service was good, and the bottle of Malbec we shared made it even better.

Today we went to the Mohave National Preserve which was ok though not as nice as Death Valley. Here are some scenes.

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Kelso Dunes. I can’t walk far on sand (bad Achilles’ tendon), but they are big quite tall – 600 feet.

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This is the old depot/Harvey House at the railroad town of Kelso. It was renovated by the Park Service, and is now the Visitor Center and Park Headquarters. Seriously cool. B0A1056D-B512-47AF-8B4F-9D80D3FF75DC

It turns out there are a lot of Joshua Trees in the Mohave Preserve. These are shorter but have more arms than others, and they are actually a separate subspecies from the ones in Joshua Tree National Park.

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The last two are of the Hole in the Wall area. We got to it from the north on a bone rattling dirt road, but the road from the south is paved. Lesson learned.

i am officially caught up.

Catching up: More about the Sierras and Bishop

We continued taking gorgeous pictures of the eastern side of the Sierras as the light and weather changed.

23201E8A-1E01-463A-AD97-F4DE68840CFA There are some lovely alpine lakes in the area.

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See the white on the upper left of the peak? That is actually snow blowing off the mountain. The Alabama Hills are in the foreground.

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Yet another mountain lake.

We also too, a trip to Bishop, CA to see the Laws Railroad Museum there. The name is of the old railroad station, and is much more than a train museum. It is basically a recreation of an old train town using both original buildings and other old buildings from the same period that were moved to the area. I still felt dreadful with my sinus cold, but it was worth the pain.

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I highly recommend it. We also had dinner in Bishop at Holy Smoke BBQ. This is one I do NOT recommend. My ribs were way over cooked and very dry. Kevin’s brisket wasn’t bad, but wasn’t exceptional either.

We left Boulder Creek campground on Sunday, 19 November. As I left, I noticed their cable had two channels of Fox News but no CNN or PBS. I wish I had asked them why, but take it as a hint of their politics.